Monday, April 1, 2013

Cheating in Atlanta; but didn't it happen here too?

The
indictments in Atlanta of the former superintendent, Beverly Hall and 32
associates for conspiracy in encouraging cheating on the Georgia state tests
are shocking enough. But the evidence suggests that the much the same has happened
over the last ten years in NYC.The only
difference is no effort or resources have been put by the city or the state into
uncovering the phenomenon; in fact, quite the reverse.

Under Bloomberg and Klein, the numbers of staff members monitoring test taking has fallen, and the
DOE stopped doing the sort of routine
erasure and score swing rate analysis which
the Board of Ed had done previously.(These
methods suggested the anomalies in Atlanta).

Sol Stern relates the case of a Bronx principal
whose school's scores jumped in one year to unbelievable levels, leading her to
receive a big bonus and honors from Bloomberg & Klein.After that year, the principal retired, and
the school’s scores fell sharply again.

Shortly after the test scores were announced, Elba Lopez retired, collecting
a $15,000 bonus for her school’s spectacular performance, thus boosting her
pension by as much as $10,000 per year.

After promising an investigation, nothing was done because the DOE claimed they
could not find the principal to interview her. Yet Yoav Gonen of the NY Post
subsequently found her at her previously recorded home address.

Instead, teachers who came forward as whistleblowers to complain of corruption were
punished and put in the rubber room; see the case of Maria Colon at Kennedy HS in the Bronx, for
example.

When teachers reported these cases to authorities, the city would fail to
follow up, and neither did the State Education Department. Routinely, the Special Commissioner of Investigation referred
cases to the DOE internal Office of Investigation and vice versa; or they would
refer them to the state, which also did nothing. As a result, cheating
allegations would languish for years.

Meanwhile, corrupt principals like Janet
Saraceno at Lehman directed teachers to change their grades and give them
credit for courses they never took. Saraceno was deemed an exemplary principal and received a $25,000 performance
bonus as a result.

When teachers came forward with their allegations against Saraceno, nothing was
done.After many months of inaction, teachers
assumed the investigation was dead, and approached the media in 2009. About this scandal, Chris Cerf,
who by that time was working for the Bloomberg campaign, said this:

"We cannot comment on any aspects of this, but we
certainly do not condone the kinds of things that are alleged. But at the same
time, we believe that accountability for student outcomes is a central driver
of positive reform and we believe it is critical to hold everybody in the
system accountable for student results."

After more than two years, when the allegations of cheating
were finally confirmed, Saraceno resigned and was appointed
an “achievement coach” by DOE instead.The implicit message to principals: lie, cheat or steal, it hardly
matters as long as test scores go up; don’t worry, you will be protected.

Even when reports of cheating are finally confirmed, after
years of delay, they are routinely suppressed.

Because
of the grading system, which rates schools on their passing rates, teachers still
speak of the pressure they receive from principals to pass at least 80% of their students.

After Michael Goodwin, a reliable ally of the mayor,
did a series of columns for the New York Post about the flood of allegations of
cheating that he had received from teachers in his inbox, and got Chancellor Walcott
to promise he would follow up, nothing was done.

“When you start giving money to the
schools to do well, that’s another incentive to appear to do well if you are
not doing well,” said Mr. Condon, a plain-spoken former New York police
commissioner. “If a lot of the evaluation is based on how the students do,
that’s an incentive for the teachers to try to help the students do well, even
in ways that are unacceptable.”

4 comments:

Joel
said...

The sad part is the enormous emphasis put on these tests. The whole reputation of the schools,teachers,students and administrators are based on, not what the students accomplish during the school year, but what they do on the state wide exams.Wait until the teacher evaluation nonsense goes into effect, partially based on test scores, it will only get worse.

Ms Haimson, can you please utilize your contacts and resources to confirm a policy change that I hear is now DOE approved. With regards to high school regents examinations, student examinations were once kept available for audit for several years after test administration. With the recent news surrounding testing scandals now the department requires individual schools to maintain the students completed examinations for only a single year. If this is true, then the ability to review examinations given during many of the current administrations years of control of the schools cannot be audited. I believe this is so and hope you can confirm or deny this policy.